Cecile Richards on 48th Anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut

Share This

In an op-ed today in Women’s Health, Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, celebrates Estelle Griswold, who “as the executive director of Planned Parenthood of Connecticut in the fifties and sixties, spent years fighting an 1879 state law that made it illegal to use or prescribe contraception. Griswold took her case all the way to the Supreme Court—and on June 7, 1965, she won, legalizing birth control in the state of Connecticut for married couples.”

The court's landmark decision — coming five years after oral contraceptives became available to American women and 49 years after Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic in the U.S. — provided the first constitutional protection for birth control for women across the country.

“Forty-eight years after Griswold v. Connecticut,” Richards says “women across America continue to see the fruits of Griswold’s labor.” She improved women’s health, led the way to Roe v. Wade, helped Planned Parenthood be there for millions of women, encouraged generations of women to follow their dreams, helped women bring home the bacon, and opened the door to the Affordable Care Act, which insures all women have access to birth control without a co-pay.

The Planned Parenthood Federation of America “Birth Control: We All Benefit” campaign reminds Americans and their elected representatives that we all benefit when women have access to affordable birth control, despite the continued attempts by some politicians and for-profit companies to take away the no co-pay birth control benefit provided through the Affordable Care Act.